India’s Leading Makerspaces

Workbench Projects (WP) is a Bengaluru-based makerspace, a cross-disciplinary platform for the public to toy with ideas, tinker with tools and machines to prototype, and build for the future. They hosted the first maker faire in India, and have recently partnered with Hyperloop India, which has got backing from Elon Musk, and will build the first pod prototype that claims to be immune from weather conditions, collision free, and travels at twice the speed of a plane.

DEFY or Design Education For Yourself is a project that started as an experiment where children from the village would gather at a space where computers are provided to them, and use the internet to learn new things. When these children start doing small projects and teaching other children using the internet, the founder Abhijit realized the potential and started project DEFY. Today, the company has won several international awards, and is raising funds to replicate this model in other places, including Africa.

There are several such interesting makerspaces in India. Makers Asylum, based in Mumbai, has been leading the efforts in this space for makers, startups and educators. IKP-eden and JAAGA, based in Bangalore, are building hardware focused communities and spaces to support startups and entrepreneurs. If you haven’t already read it, check out the Making in India report to examine these makerspaces in greater detail or watch the video below.